Stark

In the flat light of the grand jury room, a nervous, deeply embarrassed 13-year-old girl sat alone -- no attorney, no mother, no friend -- facing three tiers of middle-aged strangers silently studying her from their leather armchairs. The questions that day in March 1977 were clinical in tone. The answers would set off a furor from Hollywood to London and Paris that has yet to subside. Samantha Gailey -- sandy brown hair, dimpled chin, missing class at her junior high in Woodland Hills -- described her alleged rape by director Roman Polanski two weeks before at Jack Nicholson's home above Franklin Canyon.

A beginning elementary school teacher in a small district in California makes around $40,000 per year. That's 2 or 3 thousand dollars more than poor Larry Ellison brings in -- but Ellison, the CEO of Oracle Corp., earns it in an hour. There's nothing that illustrates the vast and growing wealth gap in America more starkly than a list of the incomes enjoyed by the top business executives in the country. A new study done for the New York Times found that pay for the 100 top CEOs jumped 9% from 2012 to 2013, raising their median annual compensation to nearly $14 million.

Vital safety systems of the U.S. frigate Stark "performed well in most areas" after a pair of Iraqi Exocet missiles slammed into the ship's port side in May, a blue-ribbon Navy panel concluded in a report released Thursday. But the group, chaired by former Navy Undersecretary James F. Goodrich, urged the Navy to add a raft of safety features, including improvements in firefighting and damage-control equipment, to its future ships.

If the producers of the HBO series "Getting On" go to Costa Mesa to see Samuel D. Hunter's "Rest," the American theater might lose another talented playwright to television. This prolific dramatist's latest play, which is having its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in a finely acted production directed by Martin Benson, put me in mind of the American version of the dark British television comedy in which the old and frail are tended to by caregivers who could use some urgent care themselves.

The man scheduled to be the next commander of the Stark says he has no reservations about his assignment to the ship that was crippled by an Iraqi missile Sunday. "From what I've heard so far, the morale seems to be fairly high, in spite of what happened," Cmdr. John B. Noll said. "I look forward to it. It's not going to be an easy job, but I'm really looking forward to it." Noll had planned to leave Rhode Island on Friday to assume command of the frigate in a routine reassignment.

Your editorial, "Stark's Idea Is Basically a Racist One," was right on the mark. While at UC Berkeley--one of the most supposed liberal campuses in the nation--I often met with incredulity and cries of betrayal to my sex and race whenever I expounded on my staunchly Republican and conservative political-economic views. Many of my peers exclaimed that because I was female and of Filipino descent, I should morally and ethically have been a bleeding-heart liberal. After graduation, I continued living in Berkeley, a town supposedly known for its progressive attitude.

The Navy's investigation into the Iraqi missile attack on the U.S. frigate Stark is now focused on the question of why the ship's crew did not maneuver into a defensive posture that could have enabled it to warn off the Iraqi plane before its sea-skimming missiles were launched, sources familiar with the probe said Monday. Pentagon officials refused any on-the-record comment about the ongoing investigation, but sources who declined to be identified confirmed that Capt. Glenn R.

The captain of the guided missile frigate Stark, forced to retire at a lower rank because of the attack that killed 37 sailors on his ship, said in an interview published Tuesday that the investigation didn't go "high enough." Capt. Glenn R. Brindel said he is disappointed in the military for blaming him without scrutinizing the actions of his superiors. "The investigation didn't go high enough, but that's all I'll say about it," Brindel told the San Diego Union.

Pete Stark is sitting in a gilded meeting room in the House of Representatives. It is home to the powerful Ways and Means Committee that the Northern California Democrat might never chair, precisely because of the sort of verbal exchange he is attempting to explain at the moment: "He said to me, 'Don't pee on my leg.' And in a sense I said, 'I won't.' " Stark, nearly 78, is dissecting the latest in a hit parade of outbursts, this one pertaining to the likelihood of California's longest-serving congressman relieving himself on a constituent.

Lewis Black gets it right when, at the start of his concert film "Stark Raving Black," he suggests his audience lower their expectations "about 20%." The cranky funnyman seems well aware that his comic stylings might land the majority of the time, but -- as is the case with most stand-up routines -- not always. Black's ranting and roiling shtick, shot over two performances this past August at Detroit's Fillmore Theatre, has, in fact, an impressive ratio of hits to misses. Numbers aside, his material makes for an entertaining, fast-moving and often very funny 80 minutes.

Matt Taibbi begins his sixth book, "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap," with a simple formulation: "Poverty goes up; Crime goes down; Prison population doubles. " It's a snapshot, a way to represent what Taibbi sees as the through-the-looking-glass reality of contemporary America, where rule of law has been subverted by, on the one hand, corporate greed and, on the other, a kind of institutionalized abuse of the poor. Such a landscape, he suggests, brings to mind the last days of the Soviet Union, which operated out of a similar sort of mass hypocrisy until, in 1990 and '91, "people were permitted to think about all this and question the unwritten rules out loud, [and]

Kia's redesigned Soul and Fiat's all-new 500L are the latest models in the quirky "toaster" class of sub-compact cars. Picture a square box riding on a car platform. The general idea is combine the comfort and efficiency of a small car with the functionality of a sport utility vehicle or crossover. And style? Let's just say the valet will be parking these behind the restaurant. Next to his car. The success of these vehicles has been mixed. Honda's Element and the Scion xB, made by Toyota, were the founding members back in 2003.

WASHINGTON - California's congressional delegation has long been known for its inability to get along. But Golden State Republicans aren't just on the opposite side of issues from Democrats. Lately, they've been at odds among themselves. The divisions were on display when the state's 15 Republicans split almost evenly on a vote to end the government shutdown and extend the nation's borrowing authority. All 38 Democrats, in contrast, stuck together in support of the measure. The Republicans also split on roll calls this year to cut the food stamp program, provide Superstorm Sandy relief, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and end a program that promotes U.S. agricultural products abroad.

Whites are far more likely than blacks to say the jury came to the right decision in the George Zimmerman trial, new polls show - another sign of the divisions laid bare by the case that has sparked protests across the country. In a newly released poll, the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of white Americans said they were satisfied that Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, while only 5% of blacks said the same. Eighty-six percent of black Americans surveyed were dissatisfied, compared to 30% of whites, Pew found in its survey of more than 1,400 adults.

Here are six restaurants that I think have exceptionally interesting wine programs. Spago: One of the few restaurants in the country that can boast a full complement of great Austrian wines, especially Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners from the Wachau. Master Sommelier Christopher Miller is approachable and particularly astute at matching wines with the dishes at Wolfgang Puck's flagship restaurant. His list is impressive and deep yet has plenty of cutting-edge wines too. 176 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310)

With community colleges turning students away for lack of available slots, Latinos are projected to face disproportionately higher workforce training gaps, a study released Friday found. That means lower wages over the lifetime of an estimated 840,000 Latinos in California, according to a study from Corinthian Colleges and economic consulting firm Encina Advisors. "California's Latino community is likely to be affected disproportionately by budget cuts and overcrowding in community college classrooms," the report said. From 2008 to 2019, demand for community college education among Latinos is expected to increase 28%, but it's expected to decline for whites and African Americans.

"I don't think I've ever seen so many hats in an audience before," said Norah Jones to a crowd taking in her performance Friday night at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio. The sight of tens of thousands of cowboy hats may have given the three-day hoedown a certain visual uniformity, but the 48 acts it featured across several stages were anything but unified in their approach toward country music. The festival, which took place on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club where the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival had been earlier in the month, featured everything from Lady Antebellum's polished balladry to the bumptious honky-tonk of Hank Williams Jr. to the roots music of Justin Townes Earle.

One of the most invigorating facets of Stagecoach is the left-field bookings to complement the big guns who bring the big crowds with their big hits. Exhibit A on Sunday: L.A. indie-pop singer-songwriter Becky Stark. On her own and as a member of Lavender Diamond and the Living Sisters, Stark lives in a musical universe light years removed from the likes of this year's headliners Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum and Zac Brown Band. Her short and intensely sweet set at the outset of Sunday's final day of country music in the desert found only tangential stylistic connections to what most fans here expect of their country music.